Nature
Quotes regarding nature: Sourced * If there's a power above us, (and that there is all nature cries aloud Through all her works) he must delight in virtue. ** Joseph Addison, Cato, A Tragedy (1713), Act V, scene 1. * Nature means Necessity. ** Philip James Bailey, Festus (1813), Dedication. * The course of Nature seems a course of Death, And nothingness the whole substantial thing. ** Philip James Bailey, Festus (1813), scene Water and Wood. * Nature too unkind; That made no medicine for a troubled mind! ** Beaumont and Fletcher, Philaster, or Love Lies a-Bleeding (c. 1609; printed 1629), Act III, scene 1. * Rich with the spoils of nature. ** Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici (1642), Part XIII. * There are no grotesques in nature; not anything framed to fill up empty cantons, and unnecessary spaces. ** Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici (1642), Part XV. * Now nature is not at variance with art, nor art with nature, they being both servants of his providence: art is the perfection of nature; were the world now as it was the sixth day, there were yet a chaos; nature hath made one world, and art another. In brief, all things are artificial; for nature is the art of God. ** Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici (1642), Part XVI. * Look abroad through Nature's range, Nature's mighty law is change. ** Robert Burns (1759-1796), Let not woman e'er complain, 1794 * How Strange that Nature does not knock, and yet does not intrude! ** Emily Dickinson, (1830-1886), Letter to Mrs. J.S. Cooper. * All nature wears one universal grin. ** Henry Fielding (1707-1754), 'Tom Thumb the Great'' (1730). * I am not insensible to natural beauty, but my emotional joys center on the improbable yet sometimes wondrous works of that tiny and accidental evolutionary twig called Homo sapiens. And I find, among these works, nothing more noble than the history of our struggle to understand nature -– a majestic entity of such vast spatial and temporal scope that she cannot care much for a little mammalian afterthought with a curious evolutionary invention, even if that invention has, for the first time in some four billion years of life on earth, produced recursion as a creature reflects back upon its own production and evolution. Thus, I love nature primarily for the puzzles and intellectual delights that she offers to the first organ capable of such curious contemplation. ** Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002), Prologue (In: Bully for Brontosaurus), 1991 * It is in man's heart that the life of nature's spectacle exists; to see it, one must feel it. ** Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), Emile (1762). * Laws Change; people die; the land remains. ** Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), quoted in Peter Blake's God's Own Junkyard, 1964 * Mountains are earth's undecaying monuments. ** Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864), The Notch of the White Mountains, 1868. * Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque revenit. ** You can drive nature out with a pitchfork, she will nevertheless come back. ** Horace (65-8 BC), Epistles I.X.24 *There's nothing that tastes of death more than the summer sun, the powerful light, exuberant nature. You sniff the air and listen to the woods and know that the plants and animals don't give a damn about you. Everything lives and consumes itself. Nature is death... ** Cesare Pavese, The devil in the hills * Nature, even when she is scant and thin outwardly, satisfies us still by the assurance of a certain generosity at the roots. ** Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, 1849 * Nature is painting for us, day after day, pictures of infinite beauty. ** John Ruskin, (1819-1900) * Nature never did betray :The Heart that Loved her. ** William Wordsworth, (1770-1850), Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey 1798. * Nature provides exceptions to every rule. ** Margaret Fuller, The Dial, July 1843. * Nature provides a free lunch, but only if we control our appetites. ** William Ruckelshaus, first EPA Adminstrator, (1970-1973 and 1983-1985), Business Week, June 18, 1990. * Perhaps I am just a hopeless rationalist, but isn't fascination as comforting as solace? Isn't nature immeasurably more interesting for its complexities and its lack of conformity to our hopes? Isn't curiosity as wondrously and fundamentally human as compassion? –-Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002), Tires to sandals (In: Eight little piggies), 1993 * The belief that we can manage the Earth and improve on Nature is probably the ultimate expression of human conceit, but it has deep roots in the past and is almost universal. ** Rene J. Dubos, (1901-1982), The Wooing of the Earth, 1980. * The famous balance of nature is the most extraordinary of all cybernetic systems. Left to itself, it is always self-regulated. ** Joseph Wood Krutch (1893-1970), Saturday Review, June 8, 1963 * The true beauty of nature is her amplitude; she exists neither for nor because of us, and possesses a staying power that all our nuclear arsenals cannot threaten (much as we can easily destroy our puny selves). ** Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002), Prologue (In: Bully for Brontosaurus), 1991 * The Wilderness and the idea of wilderness is one of the permanent homes of the human spirit. ** Joseph Wood Krutch (1893-1970), Today and All Its Yesterdays, 1958. * To be whole. To be complete. Wildness reminds us what it means to be human, what we are connected to rather than what we are separate from. ** Terry Tempest Williams, testimony before the Senate Subcommittee on Forest & Public Lands Management regarding the Utah Public Lands Management Act of 1995. Washington, D.C. July 13, 1995. * Myriads of rivulets hurrying through the lawn, The moan of doves in immemorial elms, And murmuring of innumerable bees. ** Alfred Tennyson, The Princess (1847), Canto VII, line 205. * I care not, Fortune, what you me deny; You cannot rob me of free Nature's grace, You cannot shut the windows of the sky, Through which Aurora shows her brightening face; You cannot bar my constant feet to trace The woods and lawns, by living stream, at eve. ** James Thomson, Castle of Indolence (1748), Canto II, Stanza 3. * O nature! * * * Enrich me with the knowledge of thy works; Snatch me to Heaven. ** James Thomson, The Seasons, Autumn (1730), line 1,352. * Rocks rich in gems, and Mountains big with mines, That on the high Equator, ridgy, rise, Whence many a bursting Stream auriferous plays. ** James Thomson, The Seasons, Summer (1727), line 646. * Calvin: That's the problem with nature. Something's always stinging you or oozing mucus on you. Let's go watch TV. ** Bill Watterson, Something under the bed is drooling, 1988 * Adapt or perish, now as ever, is Nature's inexorable imperative. ** H.G. Wells (1866-1946), Mind at the End of Its Tether, 1945 * Come forth into the light of things, Let Nature be your teacher. ** William Wordsworth (1770-1850), The Tables Turned (1798). * A childish feeling, I admit, but, when we retire from the conventions of society and draw close to nature, we involuntarily become children: each attribute acquired by experience falls away from the soul, which becomes anew such as it was once and will surely be again. ** Mikhail Lermontov, A Hero of Our Time * In simple hearts the feeling for the beauty and grandeur of nature is a hundred-fold stronger and more vivid than in us, ecstatic composers of narratives in words and on paper. ** Mikhail Lermontov, A Hero of Our Time ''Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations'' :Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 544-48. * No one finds fault with defects which are the result of nature. ** Aristotle, Ethics, III. 5. * Nature's great law, and law of all men's minds?— To its own impulse every creature stirs; Live by thy light, and earth will live by hers! ** Matthew Arnold, Religious Isolation, Stanza 4. * At the close of the day, when the hamlet is still, And mortals the sweets of forgetfulness prove, When nought but the torrent is heard on the hill, And nought but the nightingale's song in the grove. ** James Beattie, The Hermit. * I trust in Nature for the stable laws Of beauty and utility. Spring shall plant And Autumn garner to the end of time. I trust in God—the right shall be the right And other than the wrong, while he endures; I trust in my own soul, that can perceive The outward and the inward, Nature's good And God's. ** Robert Browning, A Soul's Tragedy, Act I. * Go forth under the open sky, and list To Nature's teachings. ** William Cullen Bryant, Thanatopsis. * To him who in the love of Nature holds Communion with her visible forms, she speaks A various language. ** William Cullen Bryant, Thanatopsis. * See one promontory (said Socrates of old), one mountain, one sea, one river, and see all. ** Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part I, Section 2. Memb. 4. Subsec. 7. * I am a part of all you see In Nature: part of all you feel: I am the impact of the bee Upon the blossom; in the tree I am the sap—that shall reveal The leaf, the bloom—that flows and flutes Up from the darkness through its roots. ** Madison Cawein, Penetralia. * Nature vicarye of the Almighty Lord. ** Geoffrey Chaucer, Parlement of Foules, line 379. * Not without art, but yet to Nature true. ** Charles Churchill, The Rosciad (1761), line 699. * Ab interitu naturam abhorrere. ** Nature abhors annihilation. ** Cicero, De Finibus, V. 11. 3. * Meliora sunt ea quæ natura quam illa quæ arte perfecta sunt. ** Things perfected by nature are better than those finished by art. ** Cicero, De Natura Deorum, II. 34. * All argument will vanish before one touch of nature. ** George Colman the Younger, Poor Gentleman, Act V. 1. * Nature, exerting an unwearied power, Forms, opens, and gives scent to every flower; Spreads the fresh verdure of the field, and leads The dancing Naiads through the dewy meads. ** William Cowper, Table Talk, line 690. * Nor rural sights alone, but rural sounds, Exhilarate the spirit, and restore The tone of languid Nature. ** William Cowper, The Task (1785), Book I. The Sofa, line 187. * What is bred in the bone will not come out of the flesh. ** Quoted by DeFoe, Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. * Chassez le naturel, il revient au galop. ** Drive the natural away, it returns at a gallop. ** Philippe Néricault Destouches, Glorieux, IV, 3. Idea in La Fontaine, Fables, Book II. 18. Chassez les prejugés par la porte, ils rentreront par la fenêtre. As used by Frederick the Great, Letter to Voltaire (March 19, 1771). * Whate'er he did, was done with so much ease, In him alone 't was natural to please. ** John Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel (1681), Part I, line 27. * By viewing nature, nature's handmaid, art, Makes mighty things from small beginnings grow; Thus fishes first to shipping did impart, Their tail the rudder, and their head the prow. ** John Dryden, Annus Mirabilis, Stanza 155. * For Art may err, but Nature cannot miss. ** John Dryden, Fables, The Cock and the Fox, line 452. * Out of the book of Nature's learned breast. ** Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas, Divine Weekes and Workes, Second Week (1584), Fourth Day, Book II, line 566. * Ever charming, ever new, When will the landscape tire the view? ** John Dyer, Grongar Hill, line 102. * Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same. ** Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays, First Series. History. * By fate, not option, frugal Nature gave One scent to hyson and to wall-flower, One sound to pine-groves and to water-falls, One aspect to the desert and the lake. It was her stern necessity: all things Are of one pattern made; bird, beast, and flower, Song, picture, form, space, thought, and character Deceive us, seeming to be many things, And are but one. ** Ralph Waldo Emerson, Xenophones. * Nature seems to wear one universal grin. ** Henry Fielding, Tom Thumb the Great (1730), Act I, scene 1. * As distant prospects please us, but when near We find but desert rocks and fleeting air. ** Samuel Garth, The Dispensary (1699), Canto III, line 27. * To me more dear, congenial to my heart, One native charm, than all the gloss of art. ** Oliver Goldsmith, The Deserted Village (1770), line 253. * E'en from the tomb the voice of nature cries, E'en in our ashes live their wonted fires. ** Thomas Gray, Elegy in a Country Churchyard, Stanza 23. * What Nature has writ with her lusty wit Is worded so wisely and kindly That whoever has dipped in her manuscript Must up and follow her blindly. Now the summer prime is her blithest rhyme In the being and the seeming, And they that have heard the overword Know life's a dream worth dreaming. ** William Ernest Henley, Echoes, XXXIII. * That undefined and mingled hum, Voice of the desert never dumb! ** James Hogg, Verses to Lady Anne Scott. * Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurrit. ** You may turn nature out of doors with violence, but she will still return. ** Horace, Epistles, I. 10. 24. ( Expelles in some versions). * Nunquam aliud Natura aliud Sapientia dicit. ** Nature never says one thing, Wisdom another. ** Juvenal, Satires, XIV. 321. * No stir of air was there, Not so much life as on a summer's day Robs not one light seed from the feather'd grass, But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest. ** John Keats, Hyperion (1818-19), Book I, line 7. * Ye marshes, how candid and simple and nothing-with-holding and free Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourselves to the sea! ** Sidney Lanier, Marshes of Glynn. * O what a glory doth this world put on For him who, with a fervent heart, goes forth Under the bright and glorious sky, and looks On duties well performed, and days well spent! For him the wind, ay, and the yellow leaves, Shall have a voice, and give him eloquent teachings. ** Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Autumn, line 30. * And Nature, the old nurse, took The child upon her knee, Saying: Here is a story-book Thy Father has written for thee. Come, wander with me, she said, Into regions yet untrod; And read what is still unread In the manuscripts of God. ** Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Fiftieth Birthday of Agassiz. * The natural alone is permanent. ** Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Kavanagh: A Tale (1849), Chapter XIII. * So Nature deals with us, and takes away Our playthings one by one, and by the hand Leads us to rest so gently, that we go, Scarce knowing if we wish to go or stay, Being too full of sleep to understand How far the unknown transcends the what we know. ** Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Nature, line 9. * No tears Dim the sweet look that Nature wears. ** Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Sunrise on the Hills, line 35. * Nature with folded hands seemed there, Kneeling at her evening prayer! ** Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Voices of the Night, Prelude, Stanza 11. * I'm what I seem; not any dyer gave, But nature dyed this colour that I have. ** Martial, Epigrams (c. 80-104 AD), Book XIV, Epigram 133. Translation by Wright. * O maternal earth which rocks the fallen leaf to sleep! ** E. L. Masters, Spoon River Anthology, Washington McNeely. * But on and up, where Nature's heart Beats strong amid the hills. ** Richard Monckton Milnes (Lord Houghton)—Tragedy of the Lac de Gaube, Stanza 2. * Beldam Nature. ** John Milton, At a Vacation Exercise in the College, 1. 48. * Wherefore did Nature pour her bounties forth With such a full and unwithdrawing hand, Covering the earth with odours, fruits, and flocks, Thronging the seas with spawn innumerable, But all to please and sate the curious taste? ** John Milton, Comus (1637), line 710. * And live like Nature's bastards, not her sons. ** John Milton, Comus (1637), line 727. * Into this wild abyss, The womb of Nature and perhaps her grave. ** John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book II, line 910. * Thus with the year Seasons return, but not to me returns Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn, Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose, Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine; But cloud instead, and ever-during dark Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair Presented with a universal blank Of Nature's works to me expunged and rased, And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out. ** John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book III, line 40. * And liquid lapse of murmuring streams. ** John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book VIII, line 263. * Accuse not Nature, she hath done her part; Do thou but thine! ** John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book VIII, line 561. * Let us a little permit Nature to take her own way; she better understands her own affairs than we. ** Michel de Montaigne, Essays, Experience. * And not from Nature up to Nature's God, But down from Nature's God look Nature through. ** Robert Montgomery, Luther, A Landscape of Domestic Life. * There is not in the wide world a valley so sweet As that vale in whose bosom the bright waters meet. ** Thomas Moore, The Meeting of the Waters. * And we, with Nature's heart in tune, Concerted harmonies. ** William Motherwell, Jeannie Morrison. * Eye Nature's walks, shoot folly as it flies, And catch the manners living as they rise. ** Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man (1733-34), Epistle I, line 13. * Seas roll to waft me, suns to light me rise; My footstool Earth, my canopy the skies. ** Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man (1733-34), Epistle I, line 139. * All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body Nature is, and God the soul; That chang'd thro' all, and yet in all the same, Great in the earth as in th' ethereal frame; Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze, Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees; Lives thro' all life, extends thro' all extent, Spreads undivided, operates unspent; Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part, As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart. ** Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man (1733-34), Epistle I, line 267. * See plastic Nature working to this end, The single atoms each to other tend, Attract, attracted to, the next in place Form'd and impell'd its neighbor to embrace. ** Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man (1733-34), Epistle III, line 9. * Slave to no sect, who takes no private road, But looks through Nature up to Nature's God. ** Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man (1733-34), Epistle IV, line 331. (Verbatim from Bolingbroke—Letters to Pope, according to Warton). * Ut natura dedit, sic omnis recta figura. ** Every form as nature made it is correct. ** Sextus Propertius, Elegiæ, II. 18. 25. * Naturæ sequitur semina quisque suæ. ** Every one follows the inclinations of his own nature. ** Sextus Propertius, Elegiæ, III. 9. 20. * Natura abhorret vacuum. ** Nature abhors a vacuum. ** François Rabelais, Gargantua, Chapter V. * Der Schein soll nie die Wirklichkeit erreichen Und siegt Natur, so muss die Kunst entweichen. ** The ideal should never touch the real; When nature conquers, Art must then give way. ** Schiller. To Goethe when he put Voltaire's Mahomet on the Stage, Stanza 6. * Some touch of Nature's genial glow. ** Walter Scott, Lord of the Isles, Canto III, Stanza 14. * Oh, Brignall banks are wild and fair, And Greta woods are green, And you may gather garlands there Would grace a summer queen. ** Walter Scott, Rokeby, Canto III, Stanza 16. * In Nature's infinite book of secrecy A little I can read. ** William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra (1600s), Act I, scene 2, line 9. * How hard it is to hide the sparks of Nature! ** William Shakespeare, Cymbeline (1611), Act III, scene 3, line 79. * To hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to Nature; to shew virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure. ** William Shakespeare, Hamlet (1600-02), Act III, scene 2, line 24. * Diseased Nature oftentimes breaks forth In strange eruptions. ** William Shakespeare, ''Henry IV'', Part I (c. 1597), Act III, scene 1, line 27. * And Nature does require Her times of preservation, which perforce I, her frail son, amongst my brethren mortal, Must give my tendance to. ** William Shakespeare, Henry VIII (1613), Act III, scene 2, line 147. * One touch of nature makes the whole world kin. ** William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida (c. 1602), Act III, scene 3, line 175. * How sometimes Nature will betray its folly, Its tenderness, and make itself a pastime To harder bosoms! ** William Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale (c. 1610-11), Act I, scene 2, line 151. * Yet nature is made better by no mean But nature makes that mean: so, over that art Which, you say, adds to nature, is an art That nature makes. ** William Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale (c. 1610-11), Act IV, scene 4, line 89. * My banks they are furnish'd with bees, Whose murmur invites one to sleep; My grottoes are shaded with trees, And my hills are white over with sheep. ** William Shenstone, A Pastoral Ballad, Part II. Hope. * Certainly nothing is unnatural that is not physically impossible. ** Richard Brinsley Sheridan, The Critic, Act II, scene 1. * Yet neither spinnes, nor cards, ne cares nor fretts, But to her mother Nature all her care she letts. ** Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene (1589-96), Book II, Canto VI. * For all that Nature by her mother-wit Could frame in earth. ** Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene (1589-96), Book IV, Canto X, Stanza 21. * What more felicitie can fall to creature Than to enjoy delight with libertie, And to be lord of all the workes of Nature, To raine in th' aire from earth to highest skie, To feed on flowres and weeds of glorious feature. ** Edmund Spenser, The Fate of the Butterfly, line 209. * Once, when the days were ages, And the old Earth was young, The high gods and the sages From Nature's golden pages Her open secrets wrung. ** Richard Henry Stoddard, Brahma's Answer. * A voice of greeting from the wind was sent; The mists enfolded me with soft white arms; The birds did sing to lap me in content, The rivers wove their charms,— And every little daisy in the grass Did look up in my face, and smile to see me pass! ** Richard Henry Stoddard, Hymn to the Beautiful, Stanza 4. * In the world's audience hall, the simple blade of grass sits on the same carpet with the sunbeams, and the stars of midnight. ** Rabindranath Tagore, Gardener, 74. * Nothing in Nature is unbeautiful. ** Alfred Tennyson, Lover's Tale, line 348. * Nature is always wise in every part. ** Edward Thurlow, 1st Baron Thurlow, Select Poems, The Harvest Moon. * Talk not of temples, there is one Built without hands, to mankind given; Its lamps are the meridian sun And all the stars of heaven, Its walls are the cerulean sky, Its floor the earth so green and fair, The dome its vast immensity All Nature worships there! ** David Vedder, Temple of Nature. * La Nature a toujours été en cux plus forte que l'education. ** Nature has always had more force than education. ** Voltaire, Life of Molière. * And recognizes ever and anon The breeze of Nature stirring in his soul. ** William Wordsworth, The Excursion (1814), Book IV. * Ah, what a warning for a thoughtless man, Could field or grove, could any spot of earth, Show to his eye an image of the pangs Which it hath witnessed; render back an echo Of the sad steps by which it hath been trod! ** William Wordsworth, The Excursion (1814), Book VI. * The streams with softest sound are flowing, The grass you almost hear it growing, You hear it now, if e'er you can. ** William Wordsworth, The Idiot Boy, Stanza 57. * Nature never did betray The heart that loved her. ** William Wordsworth, Lines Composed Above Tintern Abbey. * As in the eye of Nature he has lived, So in the eye of Nature let him die! ** William Wordsworth, The Old Cumberland Beggar, Last Lines. * The stars of midnight shall be dear To her; and she shall lean her ear In many a secret place Where rivulets dance their wayward round, And beauty born of murmuring sound Shall pass into her face. ** William Wordsworth, Three Years She Grew in Sun and Shower. * Nature's old felicities. ** William Wordsworth, The Trosachs. * To the solid ground Of Nature trusts the Mind that builds for aye. ** William Wordsworth, A Volant Tribe of Bards on Earth. * Such blessings Nature pours, O'erstock'd mankind enjoy but half her stores. In distant wilds, by human eyes unseen, She rears her flowers, and spreads her velvet green; Pure gurgling rills the lonely desert trace And waste their music on the savage race. ** Edward Young, Love of Fame (1725-28), Satire V, line 232. * Nothing in Nature, much less conscious being, Was e'er created solely for itself. ** Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1742-1745), Night IX, line 711. * The course of nature governs all! The course of nature is the heart of God. The miracles thou call'st for, this attest; For say, could nature nature's course control? But, miracles apart, who sees Him not? ** Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1742-1745), Night IX, line 1,280. Nature and Religion * Because God created the Natural – invented it out of His love and artistry – it demands our reverence. ** C.S. Lewis (1898-1963), God in the Dock, 1948 * It seems clear at last that our love for the natural world — Nature — is the only means by which we can requite God's obvious love for it. ** Edward Abbey (1927-1989) * Nature is infallible and is the voice of God, with this difference, that the language of the Holy Scripture can and should be interpreted in many ways (otherwise it would say many things contrary to the evidence of the senses), but the language of Nature is always the same, without metaphor, without allegory, without hyperbole, without doubtful, obscure, mysterious meanings. Nature speaks clearly to him who knows how to understand her, and has no need of interpretation. Italian or French –-Antonio Vallisneri (1661-1730), letter to Louis Bourguet, 30 August, 1721 * Nature is the time-vesture of God that reveals Him to the wise, and hides him from the foolish. ** Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), The Open Secret * Nature is a revelation of God; Art a revelation of mankind. ** Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) * Green is Nature's favourite colour. Poems - Graham D Priest (1939- ) ''Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers'' (1895) :Quotes reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895). * Every object in nature is impressed with God's footsteps, and every day repeats the wonders of creation. There is not an object, be it pebble or pearl, weed or rose, the flower-spangled sward beneath, or the star-spangled sky above, not a worm or an angel, a drop of water or a boundless ocean, in which intelligence may not discern, and piety adore, the providence of Him who took our nature that He might save our souls. ** Thomas Guthrie, p. 427. * If we can hear the voice of God in all sounds, see the sweep of His will in all motions, catch hints of His taste in all beauty, follow the reach of His imagination in all heights and distances, and trace the delicate ministry of His love in all the little graces and utilities that spring and blossom about us as thick as the grass, we shall tread God's world with reverent feet as if it were a temple. The pure and solemn eyes of the indwelling soul will look forth upon us from every thing which His hands have made. Nature will be to us, not some dark tissue of cloth of mystery flowing from some unseen loom, but a vesture of light in which God has enrobed Himself; and with worshipful fingers we shall rejoice to touch even the hem of His garment. ** J. H. Ecob, p. 428. * When I consider the multitude of associated forces which are diffused through nature — when I think of that calm balancing of their energies which enables those most powerful in themselves, most destructive to the world's creatures and economy, to dwell associated together and be made subservient to the wants of creation, I rise from the contemplation more than ever impressed with the wisdom, the beneficence, and grandeur, beyond our language to express, of the Great Disposer of us all. ** Michael Faraday, p. 428. * We might almost accuse nature of falsehood. One sees himself behind a mirror when nothing is there. A straight pole leaning in a pool is bent to appearance. The sun seems to rise and set, but moves not at all. We see it before it rises and after it sets. These and numberless other cases might be adduced to prove the deceitfulness of nature. Nay, they prove rather that education is the law of our being, and that here, as elsewhere, he who would not be self-deceived, must study nature's laws, must become educated. ** D.J. Pratt, p. 428. * Vast chain of being! which from God began, Natures ethereal, human, angel, man, Beast, bird, fish, insect, what no eye can see, No glass can reach, from infinite to Thee, From Thee to nothing. ** Alexander Pope, p. 429. * I hold that we have a very imperfect knowledge of the works of nature till we view them as works of God,— not only as works of mechanism, but works of intelligence, not only as under laws, but under a Lawgiver, wise and good. ** James McCosh, p. 429. * So distinguished by a Divine wisdom, power, and goodness, are God's works of creation and providence, that all nature, by the gentle voices of her skies and streams, of her fields and forests, as well as by the roar of breakers, the crash of thunder, the rumbling earthquake, the fiery volcano, and the destroying hurricane, echoes the closing sentences of this angel hymn, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, the whole earth is full of His glory! ** Thomas Guthrie, p. 429. * There's nothing bright above, below, From flowers that bloom, to stars that glow, But in its light my soul can see Some feature of Thy Deity. ** Thomas Moore, p. 429. * All things and all acts and this whole wonderful universe proclaim to us the Lord our Father, Christ our love, Christ our hope, our portion, and our joy. Oh, brethren, if you would know the meaning of the world, read Christ in it. If you would see the beauty of earth, take it for a prophet of something higher than itself. ** Alexander Maclaren, p. 429. * These, as they change, Almighty Father! these Are but the varied God. The rolling year Is full of Thee. Forth in the pleasing Spring Thy beauty walks, Thy tenderness and love. ** James Thomson, p. 430. * It is well to be in places where man is little, and God is great,— where what he sees all around him has the same look as it had a thousand years ago, and will have the same, in all likelihood, when he has been a thousand years in his grave. It abates and rectifies a man, if he is worth the process. ** Sydney Smith, p. 430. * The best thing is to go from nature's God down to nature; and if you once get to nature's God, and believe Him, and love Him, it is surprising how easy it is to hear music in the waves, and songs in the wild whisperings of the winds; to see God everywhere in the stones, in the rocks, in the rippling brooks, and hear Him everywhere, in the lowing of cattle, in the rolling of thunder, and in the fury of tempests. Get Christ first, put Him in the right place, and you will find Him to be the wisdom of God in your own experience. ** Charles Spurgeon, p. 430. * Only let us love God, and then nature will compass us about like a cloud of Divine witnesses; and all influences from the earth, and things on the earth, will be ministers of God to do us good. Only let there be God within us, and then every thing outside us will become a godlike help. ** William Mountford, p. 430. * The very voices of the night, sounding like the moan of the tempest, may turn out to be the disguised yet tender voices of God, calling away from all earthly footsteps, to mount with greater singleness of eye and ardor of aim the alone ladder of safety and peace — upward, onward, heavenward, homeward. ** John Rose Macduff, p. 431. * God is infinite; and the laws of nature, like nature itself, are finite. These methods of working, therefore, — which correspond to the physical element in us, — do not exhaust His agency. There is a boundless residue of disengaged energy beyond. ** James Martineau, p. 431. * Call nature the grand revelation! Is it more to go to nature and know it than to know God? Are there deeper depths in nature, higher sublimities, thoughts more captivating and glorious? In the mineral and vegetable shapes are there finer themes than in the life of Jesus? In the storms and glorious pilings of the clouds, are there manifestations of greatness and beauty more impressive than in the tragic sceneries of the cross? Nature is the realm of things, the supernatural is the realm of powers. ** Horace Bushnell, p. 431. Unsourced * Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit. ** Edward Abbey (1927-1989) * In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous. ** Aristotle (B.C. 384–322) * We cannot command nature except by obeying her. ** Francis Bacon (1561-1626) * The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity ... and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself. ** William Blake (1757-1827) * A flower is an educated weed. ** Luther Burbank * Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. ** Rachel Carson * Until man duplicates a blade of grass, nature can laugh at his so-called scientific knowledge. ** Thomas Edison * We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children. ** Navajo Proverb * What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset. ** Crowfoot, Native American warrior and orator (1821-1890) * Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -- over and over announcing your place in the family of things. ** Mary Oliver * When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world. ** John Muir (1838-1914) * Fortunately science, like that nature to which it belongs, is neither limited by time nor by space. It belongs to the world, and is of no country and no age. The more we know, the more we feel our ignorance; the more we feel how much remains unknown. ** Humphry Davy (1778-1829), 30.11.1825 * Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves. ** John Muir (1838-1914) * In the landscape of spring, there is neither better nor worse. The flowering branches grow naturally, some long, some short. ** Zen saying * Leave it as it is . . . The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it. ** Theodore Roosevelt * Nature answers only when she is questioned. ** Jacob Henle (1809-1885) * Nothing is rich but the inexhaustible wealth of nature. She shows us only surfaces, but she is a million fathoms deep. ** Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) * Nature teaches more than she preaches. There are no sermons in stones. It is easier to get a spark out of a stone than a moral. ** John Burroughs (1837-1921) * Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you. ** Frank Lloyd Wright * The moment one give close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself. ** Henry Miller External links Category:Nature bg:Природа bs:Priroda ca:Naturalesa cs:Příroda de:Natur el:Φύση es:Naturaleza eo:Naturo eu:Natura fa:طبیعت hy:Բնություն hr:Priroda it:Natura lt:Gamta hu:Természet nl:Natuur ja:自然 nn:Natur pl:Natura pt:Natureza ro:Natură ru:Природа sk:Príroda sr:Природа fi:Luonto uk:Природа zh:自然